Analog Analogue Update

My personal progress so far...

I have been working on adjusting my life backwards to a more pre-digital existence for two months now. Where do I stand?

THE GOOD:

Television. My TV nights (Wednesday & Thursday) consist of me watching three plus hours of old TV shows each night, some shows from back in the Analog days. Wednesday is Science Fiction/Horror/Fantasy night. Currently I am watching Dr. Who (Tom Baker era), 11/23/63, and Night Gallery. Thursday is Crime Night. Currently I am watching Love/Hate, Luther, and The Wire.

Waiting a week to catch another episode has really improved the television experience. The anticipation created by waiting heightens enjoyment. It's how television was designed to be viewed. HBO still reserves its Sunday night 8 pm Central slot for new episodes of its premium shows. That's how I viewed The Penguin and Dune Prophecy; waiting a week for each new development was definitely the way to go.

Additionally, I have been purchasing television shows. Generally the cost of DVDs (not Blue Ray) has been affordable lately and I have been able to get some good deals on Amazon. Every now and then I get luck at Goodwill and the like, as well. I am not only purchasing favorite shows, but am trying to target more obscure shows that are likely to disappear from streaming.

THE MIXED:

News. I'm still getting most of my news from YouTube and Substack. One thing I have discovered: local news segments are pretty reliable and good sources of news and interesting stories. This is especially true of the "Channel 4 Investigates" style consumer segments. Many of these are well written, researched, and produced. You can learn about a varieties of scams and anti-consumer trends, which is useful, but you also get really compelling stories of people who were mistreated by government officials or other bad actors.

I've also been using the Associated Press website for headline news. They still write old school, inverted pyramid news stories. When you want the facts about a news story, without having to scroll through seven paragraphs of garbage, they are the best source.

But almost every other news outlet is just terrible. A perfect example of this was a recent major news network's report I viewed about two factor identification hacking. They promoted the idea that it was under attack and endangered users, but failed to provide any details. Then they brought on an IT "expert" who went on about phishing attacks, which didn't seem to have anything to do with the topic. Just total useless gibberish and typical.

THE BAD:

Over the Air TV. When I started out this project, I purchased a new antenna with an inline amp. The results were the same as the old antenna: mediocre. I live about 50 miles from the Green Bay broadcast towers, which must be just past their effective limits. Some days one channel comes in fine, other days it won't even show up. Some days, another channel, same thing. There is never a day when ALL the channels come in. It's enough of a pain in the ass that I have removed Over the Air TV from my Analog Analogue game plan.

But I did discover another plus for the pre-digital days. With a digital signal, if there is a signal weakness you get this unwatchable jagged scramble or a black screen. That is NOT an improvement over static. In the pre-digital days, if a signal weakened, you could still hear the program and more or less make it out through the static.

Reading Nights. I set Monday and Tuesday nights as reading nights. No TV, just books with some background music. For the most part, it has worked out well. I've gotten caught up on my reading - crime novels for my writing and non-fiction for my mind. But there have been nights where I just wasn't in the mood.

Now that I am deep into historical research for my new novel, I hope that this will improve. But this is an area where social media and streaming has damaged my attention span and it will take hard work to repair it.

THE UGLY:

Commercials. Almost every streaming platform now is now overrun with commercials. You expect that for the free channels like Tubi or FreeVee but the basic versions of Prime, Netflix, and Peacock now include commercials. Favesome is so bad that I found it unwatchable.

The idea of paying $8.99 or $12.99 and having to watch the same six ads over and over and over again is ridiculous. These platforms have no incentive to moderate the experience, since they all want to push people to pay more for an ad-free experience. What better way to do that than to increase the ad frequency and make sure people are exposed to pitches for toilet paper featuring bears talking about their dirty, hairy asses.

Yes, old analog TV was filled with ads. Over the Air TV still has ads. Streaming was supposed to provide a purer viewing experience, where you could pull from a deep reservoir of TV shows and movies and watch them uninterrupted. Even that deep reservoir is declining, as streamers shelve content and don't update their back catalog often enough. (Max is terrible at this) At this point, streaming is morphing back into the cable TV model, the technology it was supposed to replace and make obsolete.

THE STATUS:

Analog Analogue is still a work in progress. Progress has been made but more work is needed. My biggest issue is that I am still struggling to let go of algorithmic conditioning and recapture a healthier control over my attention. Once I get there, I think I will have a true measure of how far back I can go to an analog lifestyle.